Winter Solstice

We had a fragmented but nice solstice - every year we get a little more intentional in how we celebrate this much more resonant holiday than xmas.

I had bought candles when I came home the night of my last day of school before a short break - the 21st on the solstice. For the first time, I really enjoyed all of the beautiful lights at Harvard square. I was even decadent and stopped for 30 seconds to look at a bazarre of gifts right at the square. I had hoped to light candles when we came home for the solstice, but for some reason I ended up taking Liam to Harvest Coop and Target that evening - after being incredibly sleep deprived - it felt strange to go shopping - it's been so long that I've done it I had no idea what else to get, except for the diapers I was sent out to get. At Target, though, I thought I'd do some xmas shopping - and do the motherly responsible thing of getting Liam and Kalian underwear and sox - got Chris and iPod - thank goddess for his parents giving us a Target gift certificate for Christmas. But I was so tired and so wide eyed at the prospect of being out shopping for the first time in forever that it took us a long time to shop - I also let Liam look at the toys after we shop there - he is so great. He definitely wanted to stay but not to buy anything - fortunately, he doesn't quite get that with the right amount of plastic, he could actually take this stuff home. At 10pm, Chris called and asked in so many words, where in the heck we were. I have no idea why it took that long, and I was sad that I had spent Winter Soltice evening particpating in capitalist consumerism...

But we did talk about the solstice elf coming, so when Liam woke up the next morning he had presents to open from Mickey - his favorite is his "solstice elf firefighter book"

And the whole theme of darkness/light is fun to talk to Liam about - and last night, Liam, Kalian, my Mom and I went to a great show at the Museum of Science planetarium - it was all about the winter solstice - stars in the sky, pagan traditions, christian traditions and others, as well. It was amazing, though Liam was very scared for much of it, and finally fell asleep...